


I could not travel both and be one traveler

by goodbyelover



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Side Effects (Music Video), Banter, Feels, Fist Fights, Friends to Lovers, Good Leader Bang Chan, Guilt, Happy Ending, Hwang Hyunjin is a Mess, Love Confessions, M/M, Minor Violence, Mystery, Secrets, Summer Vacation, Sweet Lee Felix (Stray Kids)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27452845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbyelover/pseuds/goodbyelover
Summary: Felix thinks he's in for an adventurous summer with his friends - fun in the sun, shenanigans, maybe snagging the boy of his dreams - but as strange things start happening during their trip, he realizes that there might be more to this summer vacation than meets the eye.(Or: Felix goes on an unexpected journey.)
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Felix
Comments: 60
Kudos: 152
Collections: STRAY KIDS MV FICFEST





	I could not travel both and be one traveler

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [Side Effects](https://youtu.be/5rPluw_-Eb4); Written for [SKZ MV Fic Fest](https://twitter.com/skzmvfest). 
> 
> Title taken from ['A Road Not Taken'](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken) by Robert Frost, which Felix has done a small narration of, found [here.](https://youtu.be/dD1661n-Ss8)
> 
> Beta'd by @maricolous, you're the best ♥
> 
> I really had so much writing this, even if it also, at times, was kicking my ass, lol
> 
> A small collection of semi-spoiler-y warning/notes in the end notes.

The sun is scorching as they all disembark, heat pressing down on their shoulders in a way that’s nearly physical. Everything’s overbright and washed out and Felix can feel the tell-tale signs of a headache begin to form in response, but he’s too excited to pay it mind just yet.

The bus hangs around long enough for them to grab their suitcases before the engine sputters back to life and the driver pulls away, leaving the eight of them in what looks to be the middle of nowhere, beneath the most dilapidated bus stop Felix has ever seen.

“Alright,” Chan said, naturally taking charge as he claps his hands. “Let's get going, the van should be just on the other side of those trees.” He then swoops in just as Felix is reaching for his own suitcase. “I got this, Fi.”

“Oh! Thanks,” Felix says, hastily stepping back so that Chan can haul the suitcase up into the cart, piled amongst the rest of the luggage. Felix can’t even remember what he’d packed in there because details of their destination had been sparse from the start, but it’s visibly overstuffed and heavy as Chan’s muscles flex with the effort to get it where it belongs.

“So,” Felix adds as they all set off across the burning concrete. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going now or are you going to string out this surprise?”

Chan laughs, full chested and cheerful. “Well, it is supposed to be a surprise.”

“You’re the worst,” Felix complains, but there’s no bite to it. There never is when it comes to Chan, and instead he just follows as Chan leads them across what looks like a long abandoned manufacturing plant. It’s such a strange place to begin summer vacation, but Felix can see detour signs just down the road from the bus stop and supposes that this is just part of Chan’s plan.

Chan always has a plan, after all.

“Eugh, I should have brought a hat,” Hyunjin grumbles and Felix twists around to see his friend sulking, hands thrown up over his eyes. The sun is starting to feel overwhelming – so relentless as it bears down on them like a god with a fury.

Beside Hyunjin, Jeongin starts rummaging around his backpack before producing a zebra striped bucket hat. “You’re so bad at planning ahead.”

“Am not,” Hyunjin mutters resentfully, but still takes the hat, jamming it on. It clashes terribly with Hyunjin’s sleek outfit and blond hair and Felix has to stifle a giggle, though he doesn’t do a very good job judging by the way Hyunjin turns his sulking towards him.

“Don’t worry, Jinnie,” Felix manages, trying to hide his grin behind both hands. “You’re still the most handsome.”

They troop past derelict silos and concrete buildings, everything rusted and broken – truly the desiccated corpse of industrialism. By the time they reach the woods, Felix can feel the headache beginning to root deeper in the base of his skull, regretting that he left his painkillers in his suitcase, now buried in the cart.

He drops back, slowing down because he knows if Chan notices, he’ll drop everything to unearth the suitcase and Felix would rather just stick it out for another ten minutes than slow them down any longer.

Instead, he settles next to Jisung, reaching out to link their pinkies together. “Are you going to spill the beans?”

Snorting, Jisung wiggles his trapped pinky. “Bold of you to assume I know what’s going on.”

“Aw, come on!”

Jisung grins, shaking his head as he leads Felix through the trees. “I really don’t, baby. You know how these things go. Chan really wanted to surprise you.”

Unbidden, Felix’s eyes are drawn to where Chan’s leading the way ahead of them, broad shoulders strong and steady. It isn’t like Jisung doesn’t have a point. Though this is a shared vacation, Felix had been the one wanting to go on an adventure as a group and Chan, being ever constant, had jumped in to plan things once Felix had brought it up. “Yeah,” Felix says, voice quiet as he tamps down a smile. “I suppose you’re right.”

“How are you doing though?” Jisung asks as they stroll along. “You were pretty knocked out back there, I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to wake you up.”

The smile drops away as Felix groans, plopping his head on Jisung’s shoulder. “You know how it is after finals,” he whines softly. “I told you I’d need like a week to recover and Chan drags us all out here in the fucking morning.”

“That bad, huh?” Jisung teases lightly, yelping when Felix jabs him in the side.”Hey! I am trying to be a good friend and you are being a terrible one.”

“Oh, hush,” Felix says with an eye roll as they continue along. “It’s not really that bad, you know. It’s just…” He pauses, pinching the bridge of his nose, the headache clashing with the sudden jumble of thoughts teeming in his head. “It’s been hard,” he finally admits, gaze dropping to the ground in front of him. “I’m still trying to decide if I’m going to switch majors or not, you know?”

But Jisung doesn’t laugh or tease, just wiggles their linked pinkies together. “You wanna talk about it?”

“I just… I dunno. What if tech isn’t the way to go for me? Maybe Jeongin’s got the right of it and working with kids would be more... worthwhile, or something.” Felix frowns, shrugging his shoulders, unable to explain it better.

“Would it make you happier?” Jisung asks.

“How am I supposed to know?” Felix asks in return, sighing and shaking his head. “It’s fine. I’m not going to decide until we’re back home.”

They walk side by side, Felix watching as Seungmin goes to bother Jeongin and then Minho and getting playfully rebuffed both times – Jeongin with an eye roll and Minho with an affectionate scoff. He watches as Changbin brushes some twigs and debris that had fallen onto Hyunjin’s shoulder, fingers gentle until he starts fluffing Hyunjin’s hair in all directions, knocking the bucket hat askew just to get Hyunjin to turn his way and scowl.

But mostly, Felix watches Chan, as Chan makes sure they’re still going in the right direction, but also looking back every few moments to take a headcount, making sure that he hadn’t lost any of them in the thirty seconds he’s had his back turned. He catches Felix’s eye, grinning broadly before turning back to the winding path, and something about that warms Felix’s cheeks more than the sun itself.

“I…” Felix begins after some thought, pausing to assess if they’re far enough back that nobody can eavesdrop. “I was thinking of telling him.”

“Hm?” Jisung asks, distracted as he runs his fingertips over the rough bark of passing trees. “What do you mean?”

“I… Chan?” Felix says, still quiet, still hesitant. He fumbles for Jisung’s hand, lacing their fingers together for the solidity of touch. “I want to tell him how I feel.”

Jisung stops abruptly, jerking back, though their hands remain interlocked as he brings Felix to a halt with him. “Oh. Oh?”

The flush on Felix’s cheeks grows, though the movement of blood beneath his skin also sets off a spike of pain up his neck – he really is going to have to get those painkillers soon. “I mean. What? Is. Does he… not…” Felix suddenly wonders if he’s made a mistake in telling this to Jisung instead of confiding in Seungmin or Hyunjin, but Jisung’s sentimental tendencies are more attuned to Felix’s heart.

But does Chan not feel the same?

“No, no,” Jisung says quickly, letting go of Felix’s hand but only to wrap an arm around his shoulders instead, like parcel string holding the two of them together. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just wasn’t expecting you to say that. Especially now.”

Felix grimaces, partially from the blossom of pain at the base of his skull and partially from the implication of Jisung’s words. “I just think… we’ve always sort of… avoided talking about it. But I want to tell him – before we go back. I want to try.”

“Guys?” Jeongin calls, and Felix realizes he and Jisung have fallen behind. Everyone’s stopped ahead of them, waiting and expectant.

“Sorry!” Jisung yells back, tugging Felix along. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

Before they catch up completely, he squeezes the arm still wrapped around Felix. “You should tell him, Lix. If that’s what you really want.”

Felix’s eyes meet Chan’s again, the other’s gaze so warm and amused as he waits for them, for him. “I really want that.”

***

By the time they reach the van, Felix’s headache has gone from a minor inconvenience to a major pain and he fumbles to unzip the front pocket where he’d stashed a family sized bottle of painkillers, dumping out two pills before promptly swallowing them.

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder. “You okay?” Hyunjin asks, pausing with Felix as the others load up the van.

Felix shoots Hyunjin a grimacing smile. “Yeah, I think I just slept too long on the bus,” he reassures. Once the painkillers kicked in, he’d be right as rain.

Hyunjin frowns, seemingly unconvinced. “You’ll say something if it gets worse, right?”

“Of course,” Felix says, blinking when Hyunjin’s gloom persists. “Is something wrong?” Hyunjin could be moody at times and usually it was best to leave him alone, but Felix doesn’t want things to start off on a bad note.

“I’m fine,” Hyunjin said, though his words are just a touch too sharp to be true.

“Come on, guys,” Chan calls out. “Let's get going.”

“Whatever,” Hyunjin mutters sourly. He huffs off, sidling over to Jeongin instead, leaving Felix to wonder if something had happened while he was asleep.

“Who’s driving?” Changbin asks as he shoves the last suitcase in between the seats. Felix had expected the van to be like the one his mom drove, practical but mundane, but this van itself is more like a safari vehicle straight out of a nature documentary, all open roof and free to the breeze.

“I am,” Minho says, before anyone else can speak, not even Chan. “I trust zero of you behind the wheel.”

“I can drive,” Chan protests but Minho just rolls his eyes.

“I trust zero,” he emphasizes before smacking Changbin’s ass. “Navigate me, bitch.”

Changbin fixes the group with an incredibly exaggerated expression of regret. “All he does is use me.”

They all clamber in and though Felix’s head is still throbbing, he can feel it ease off just a little bit when Chan settles next to him, warm and bright in a way that’s drastically different from the sun that’s beating down upon them.

“You gonna fall asleep again?” Chan asks as the van starts up and begins trundling onward.

“Not yet – I’m still trying to figure out where you’ve taken us,” Felix says, twisting around to take in the scene. It’s only then that he realizes that rather than a road, they’re simply heading straight into the open wilderness. It really is like a safari. “Huh.”

“You’ll never guess,” Chan says, confident as ever.

“Do you think it's going to stay this sunny?” Seungmin asks, a hand over his eyes as he looks to the sky, his other hand curled protectively around his favorite camera.

Jeongin glances down at his phone and shakes his head. “Mmmm… Looks like it should ease off soon,” he tells the other. “Give it a bit.”

Felix settles back, slumping gently against Chan’s sturdy shoulder, shifting around until he finds the most comfortable way to curl up. “Betcha I can figure out where we’re going before we get there.”

“Well, otherwise you would just know because we’re already there,” Chan says dryly, though he stays put as Felix wiggles around. “What’ll you bet?”

Felix thinks about it, thinks back to the conversation he had with Jisung earlier. “A secret,” he says, glancing up at Chan to gauge his reaction. They’re close enough that Felix can feel Chan’s breath fanning over his cheeks, but this isn’t anything new for the two of them. Chan tilts his head so they can both see each other more easily, and his gaze is as warm and as fond as it always has been.

Chan is not as harsh as the sun, but if he were the sun, Felix thinks himself to be a sunflower, greedily soaking up everything Chan is willing to offer.

“A secret,” Chan agrees, reaching up to flick Felix’s nose gently. “Gonna fall asleep on me?”

As if summoned, Felix is overcome with a yawn as he hides behind his hands. The painkillers have started to kick in, and the absence of the headache’s worst pulsing leaves him surprisingly worn out, further lulled by the rise and fall of Chan’s breathing. “Maybe,” he hums.

***

The sun does as Jeongin predicts, sinking just enough to let the breezes take over. It’s suddenly the most idyllic summer day and Felix’s headache has finally dissipated, making it easier to foot wrestle with Jisung and Seungmin as they pass the time.

“Do you see that?” Chan asks, craning his head around to look at something off the side of the van.

They all twist around to see what he means and Felix catches sight of a bloom of red, starkly out of place in the expanse of rich greens that paint their entire landscape. It’s a small tangle of flowers – though too far away for Felix to tell what kind they are. Roses and poinsettias all look the same from a distance, but there was something in Felix’s gut that tells him otherwise.

“Dianthus,” he says, peering over Chan’s shoulder. Naming the thing gives it shape and substance and he perks upright at the realization, nudging emphatically at Chan. “Oh! Dianthus. It’s just like when we first met.”

“You remember that?” Chan asks, tearing his gaze away from the flowers, surprise written all over his face.

Felix wonders if he should be more careful – he gives pieces of himself away too easily, his most fatal flaw – but it’s Chan and the only thing stronger than the fluttering feeling of love inside Felix is his complete trust in Chan. "Of course," he says, words raw on his tongue. “I could never forget that. Meeting you.”

Something in Chan’s expression turns fragile and Felix feels a brief flutter of worry – has he said too much, too soon? Chan’s the type to hold the weight of the world on his shoulders; too fiercely protective to be anything else. But Felix’s fears are assuaged as Chan gently knocks their shoulders together.

“Me too,” he quietly agrees. There are ghosts in Chan’s eyes, but he still smiles as warmly as ever.

“This is Han Jisung-erasure and I don’t appreciate this,” Jisung declares.

“I meant all of you,” Felix amends hastily, tearing his gaze away from Chan to smack at Jisung’s shin. “All of you. It was the best day of my life.”

It wins him several smiles, even a begrudging one from Hyunjin, which feels special and is only spoiled by the soft spike of pain where his spine meets his skull – he’ll have to grab another set of painkillers soon.

***

“How far out are we?” Seungmin asks. They’ve long since left the dianthus blooms behind and have returned to the endless expanse green meadow and occasional thicket.

“Have we reached the ‘are we there yet’ stage already?” Chan asks, snorting.

Seungmin squints, not quite as easy to annoy as Hyunjin but containing little patience. “It was just a question,” he says, pointedly.

“You’ll know when we get there,” Chan says, and his words aren’t sharp, but there’s just a hint of steel beneath them – not that there really needs to be any. Chan is and always has been their leader, the deciding vote, the last one standing.

It’s enough that Seungmin backs off, hands raising briefly between them. “Fine, fine.”

Felix watches this exchanged, glazed over. He’s put off grabbing the painkillers – his suitcase currently serving as Hyunjin’s footrest as he sleeps and Felix is trying to put off disturbing him as long as possible. Hyunjin’s mood hasn’t improved much while they’ve traveled through the green plains.

Jeongin looks up from where he’s fiddling with his phone. “It’s a ways off,” he says, and then looks to the sky. “I think it’ll get dark before we get there.”

This seems to placate Seungmin enough to drop the topic completely, instead taking up his camera.

“Lix,” he calls, slouching to try for a better angle. “Smile.”

Felix gives Seungmin his best, scrunchiest smile, and plays model until Seungmin moves on to Chan and Jeongin.

The lush green meadows eventually give way to scrubby underbrush and rocky outcroppings, the trees becoming sparse and strangely twisted, like they’d been dancing and then forgotten how to move, stuck as relics of another time. 

“It really just keeps going forever,” Felix marvels, grabbing onto the roof of the van and standing to try and see further over the horizon – he can see so far and yet not far enough, the trees and rocky hills obscuring just enough that he has no idea what lay ahead of them.

He doesn’t get a good look, though, because a hand wraps around his shoulder and yanks him back in. Felix’s head nearly hits one of the roof girders before he’s facing Hyunjin’s furious scowl.

“What are you doing?” Hyunjin demands. “That’s dangerous.”

Felix jerks himself away, bristling at Hyunjin’s clear rebuke. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks, mouth twisted stubborn and eyes unflinching in the face of Hyunjin’s ire. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“You could have hurt yourself if we drove over anything weird,” Hyunjin snaps back. “Someone has to make sure you don’t do anything stupid again.”

It’s such an extreme thing to say, something not at all belonging to this situation, and Felix jerks back, stung, something about the ‘again’ ringing in his head. Again. Again. Again.

Felix had not realized Hyunjin was judging him so harshly.

“Hyunjin.” It’s Minho, not Chan, who cuts him off, sharp as ice. “Stop.”

Minho’s still driving even when he turns around and meets Felix’s gaze, and there’s still tension in the set of his lips, but he tries to soften it as he jerks his head forward. “Why don’t you and Changbin switch. You’ll have a better view up here. Changbin’s been a pretty shit navigator anyway.”

“All he does is use me,” Changbin reiterates, clearly trying to lighten the rapidly decaying atmosphere.

Felix does his best to force a smile back onto his face. “Sure. I could do with a change of scenery.”

They pause to swap seats – Hyunjin even looks apologetic, but Felix ducks away before Hyunjin can say anything, pausing only to grab another set of painkillers, swallowing them down before heading to the passenger side. Is it petty? Perhaps. But he’s still smarting over Hyunjin’s words.

“Doing okay?” Minho hums as he puts the van back in drive, trundling forward at the same gentle pace they’ve been at since the start. “There’s a map in the cupholder.”

Felix reaches into the cupholder, pulling out the map, planning on taking his duties as navigator seriously until he unfolds the ‘map’ in question. It’s childishly simplistic, nothing more than a few scribbles connecting sloppy circles on one end of the page to the other. “What?” he asks, dumbfounded.

Minho snickers, reaching over to pat Felix’s leg. “It’s not a very complicated route.”

Staring down at the scribbles for a few moments longer, Felix then twists in his seat, squinting back at the boys sprawled out in the back. “Changbin, you useless slut.”

“What?” Changbin squawks in offense, as Minho bursts into a full blown laugh, high and squeaky as he hunches over the steering wheel. “I am an amazing slut.”

“Ah shit, this is why you’re my favorite,” Minho wheezes, wiping tears away as he struggles to compose himself, taking several minutes to do so, he's so chuffed by the entire thing.

_“Behave up there,” Chan calls out, though he’s grinning at Felix when their eyes meet._

Over Chan’s shoulder, Seungmin leans into Jeongin’s space. “How long have we been at it?” he asks.

Jeongin frowns, tugging out his phone and thumbing the screen on. “Sixty eight h

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ours.”

They continue to wind through the hills at a sleepy pace, with Felix comfortably curled up in the passenger seat, gazing idly at the trees passing them by. He can’t tell what kind they are, making the entire landscape implacable.

It makes him feel intangible. As if he doesn’t exist as Felix the longer they drive. He’s no longer a college student with a new semester on the horizon, with a career to chase, with exams to pile up, with a love to hunt for. Instead, he’s fragmented light and displaced atoms. Some part of him dies with each exhale, but another part of him is born with every inhale.

Minho hits the breaks so fast that the seat belt cuts hard into Felix’s shoulder, breaking him out of his reverie.

“Minho, what the fuck!” comes chorusing from the backseat area, several of their friends having taken a tumble.

But the reason for stopping becomes clear as Felix turns back towards the front of the van. A chain link fence stretches across the meadow they’re meandering through, signs plastered along its length that read ‘ROAD CLOSED’, with caution tape wrapped everywhere.

“Is this really…?” Jisung questions as he leans into the cab between Minho and Felix, cheeks puffed out as he eyes the fence. “... On purpose?”

“No, there’s just fences accidentally wandering into the wilderness for fun,” Minho says, snorting as he unbuckles himself, sliding out of the driver’s seat. “Come on, let's see if the gate is nearby.”

They all pile out of the van, and Felix squints against the harsh sunlight, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the worst of it.

(It’s in these moments that he wishes his hands were more like Hyunjin’s. More sun protection provided by those bigass palms.)

“Wasn’t expecting this,” Chan mutters under his breath as he heads off to the left in search of the gate, Minho splitting off with Jisung to the right.

There’s the click of a shutter and Felix glances over, spotting Seungmin with his camera to his eye, snapping photos of the fence. It’s such a strangely mundane thing to capture, but that’s also such a Seungmin thing to do – capture even the most banal things in life and turn them to artistic fancy.

Not everyone shares the sentiment though.

“Hey,” Hyunjin barks, stalking over to Seungmin. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Seungmin raises one eyebrow, unimpressed. “Documenting.”

This just proves to further incense Hyunjin as he shoves into Seungmin’s space. “Is that really all you can think of right now?” he spits out. “This isn’t some little experiment of yours, you twatwaffle.”

With that, he snatches the camera out of Seungmin’s hands, hurling it to the ground. Felix flinches when he hears the sharp crack of the lens breaking.

“Hyunjin!” someone yells from beyond – sounds like Jisung.

But Seungmin isn’t one to back down – Hyunjin may be prey to fickle furies, but Seungmin can be steel when he wants to be. He shoves Hyunjin back, putting distance between them. “Will you chill out, Jin, you know why I’m doing it.”

“Fucking doesn’t matter!” Hyunjin says heatedly, leaping towards Seumgin, but before things escalate further, the boys are there, Chan and Changbin yanking Hyunjin away, even as he keeps snarling at Seungmin, as Jeongin and Jisung keep Seungmin at bay as well. It’s a sudden cacophony of bodies and yelling and Felix feels his head throb, his headache already beginning to return.

“I’m gonna…” he begins, before realizing nobody’s able to even hear him, and simply turns to settle back in the van until things blow over.

As they drive over the fence, Felix reaches for the map and realizes it isn’t in the cupholder anymore. “Whaaaaat,” he mutters, hunting around the nooks and crannies of the front seat. Hadn’t he put the map away? Or had it still been in his lap when they’d stopped so abruptly? Felix realizes that the map is nowhere to be found, probably lying abandoned on the grass near the fence.

“Soooo,” he says, straightening up and throwing a guilty look Minho’s way. “I think I killed the map.”

“Did it commit crimes?” Minho asks, and then snickers when he sees the stricken look on Felix’s face. “Aw, c'mon, please, you look like you kicked a puppy.”

“I didn’t mean to lose it!” Felix exclaims, flustering pink with embarrassment.

Mino reaches out, patting his knee, intentionally condescendingly. “There, there, we both knew it was a dumb map. You’re just up here to be pretty.”

Felix considers this for a moment before realization dawns on him. “Oh, hell no,” he said, twisting around to find Changbin. “Now _I’m_ the useless slut.”

***

“Come on, baby,” Jisung mumbles, curling into Felix’s shoulder, an arm flopping over Felix’s chest. “I’m tired.”

“Mmkay, baby,” Felix agrees easily enough. The painkillers have left him drowsy this time and he lets himself sink down onto the van floor in an exhausted heap with Jisung, his awareness dropping away until all that’s left is the sluggish thud of his heartbeat as it falls into rhythm with Jisung’s breathing.

He difts, boneless and hazy, until someone murmurs somewhere above his head.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” It’s Changbin, Felix identifies after a long sleep-addled moment, the concern laced heavy in his voice. “I’m a little worried about what happened earlier.”

“We knew it might not be smooth sailing,” another replies – Chan, Felix would recognize him anywhere. “I think he's doing fine.”

“I’m just worried we’re pushing him too hard,” Changbin says in the same hushed tones. “He’s so volatile. It might be too much.”

Felix feels a stab of guilt, realizing just who they’re talking about. He’s not sure what he could have done to alleviate his friend’s mood, but it still weighs heavily on him, remembering how Hyunjin had lunged at Seungmin.

“It’s a lot for him to handle but I think he’s doing the best he can,” Chan reassures gently. “Jeongin’s keeping a close eye on things, we won’t let it get worse. I trust him.”

“I don’t think it’s as dire as you think,” Jisung broke in with a whisper. “Did you see the city?”

Felix shoots upright so fast that he goes light headed, his vision blurring. Jisung falls off his chest with a startled yelp, shoulders thunking against the floor as he’s displaced. Changbin and Chan both look their way, brows furrowed in concern from where they sat right behind the driving cab.

“Lix?” Changbin calls out gently. “You okay there?”

“I–” Felix begins, bewildered, even as Jisung whines and curls into his side, clearly still half-asleep despite Felix’s outburst.

“The Han Jisung-erasure is strong,” Jisung grumbles, raising his head just enough to crack an eye open to glare at Changbin and shoot him a middle finger. “Ignore my pain, why don’t you, Dickbutt.”

Changbin just gives him a bemused look before returning to Felix. “Did something happen?”

It takes a moment for Felix’s heartbeat to slide back down his throat and he coughs in its absence, flushing now that he’s reoriented himself. “I think I was just having a weird dream,” he admits, allowing Jisung to tug him back down onto the floor.

“Was it scary?” Jisung whispers, cheek tucked on Felix’s shoulder.

“Let us know if you need anything, Lix, okay?” Changbin presses, watching as they settle back down.

“I’m fine,” Felix reassures them both, already feeling his eyelids grow heavy again, the warmth of Jisung like a blanket draped over him, lulling him away again. “Promise.”

It doesn’t occur to him until his heartbeat smooths back out that Chan hadn’t actually said a single word.

***

“Oh shit,” Minho swears, and it’s the only warning Felix gets as the van jerks to a stop for the second time with a loud pop, so abruptly that Felix nearly brains himself on the dashboard.

“What’s going on up there?” Chan calls out.

“I think I hit something?” Minho hazards as he slides out of the driver’s seat to inspect, the others piling out to join him.

Sure enough, the front left tire is flat, punctured in a way that Felix thought only happened in the movies, a jagged, blossoming hole in its tread.

“... Well,” Chan finally says as they all gathered around to stare at the tire. “That looks… bad.”

“I think it’s worse than it looks,” Minho says, more perfunctory than apprehensive as he crouches next to the tire, peering at it with an eye that clearly doesn’t know what to do with it but is willing to find out. “I think whatever did this hit the engine too, that’s why it stalled out.”

Felix tries his best not to whine, fingertips at his temples. The sun has set but he just wants to arrive at their destination so he can curl up and sleep, his head killing him again.

“Are you serious?” Hyunjin demands, startling several of them. Unlike Felix, Hyunjin clearly has no qualms in voicing his ire. “Are you fucking serious, Minho?”

Over Hyunjin’s shoulder, Jisung and Seungmin exchange wary glances, subtly shifting away from their friend in the face of a brewing storm. In contrast, Minho looks unperturbed as he rises to his feet and faces Hyunjin, one eyebrow arching ever so slightly. “I think I’m quite serious, yes.”

On the surface, it’s a perfectly calm response, but they’re all well-read in the Book of Minho, catching the slip of sarcasm in his reply. “Fuck you,” Hyunjin snarls, and everyone winces as he throws his bag down, stalking off into the underbrush without a backwards glance.

Felix stares at his feet, hands twisting gently at the hem of his shirt. He feels helpless to the slow disintegration of atmosphere, unable to reach out to mend whatever has caused things to burn so quickly.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Jeongin offers quietly. He turns to follow after Hyunjin, pausing only to gently, if somewhat awkwardly, pat Felix on the shoulder, before he too is gone.

Silence hangs over those remaining boys as he leaves, though it’s eventually broken as Chan takes a deep breath and then lets it out with a resigned huff. “Let's take a look at it,” he tells Changbin, though they both look dubious at their chances of being able to fix whatever might be wrong with the van as they both round to the hood to pop it open.

Though Felix wishes to be useful, he finds it difficult to uproot himself, still staring down at his scuffed sneakers until there’s a hand at his elbow and Minho pulls him away with unerringly gentle fingertips.

“Did you hit your head or anything?” Minho asks, sitting them both down in the grass and methodically checking him over.

“No, it’s just a bit of a headache,” Felix sighs, eyes slipping shut under Minho’s attentiveness. It’s easier to pretend everything is okay if he isn’t staring right at it. “We’ve been driving for so long, I just want to be in bed.”

“No adventures for you?” Minho’s voice is a teasing lilt as he combs his fingers through Felix’s hair, careful not to tug on any tiny tangles.

“No adventures until I have slept and bathed, I feel like an absolute gremlin,” Felix says, cracking an eye open just to peek at Minho, grinning. “You know me, I’m baby.”

“That you are,” Minho agrees, and there’s something about it that makes Felix’s heart skip a beat, makes everything suddenly too much. Minho’s always been gentle with him, always taken on a more nurturing quality towards Felix as opposed to his more freewheeling playfulness with someone like Seungmin or Jisung.

Cautiously, as if moving too quickly would light a match and set the moment to flames, Felix turns to face Minho directly, searching his face. Minho sits under his regard, patient, stalwart.

“I need you to do a favor for me,” Felix finally manages, fingers back to to messing at the hem of his shirt with a twist of distress.

This gets Minho’s head cocked to the side just a fraction, something flickering in his eyes. “What’s that?”

It feels as if Felix is being suffocated, something so tense and thick wrapped around him that his breath hisses on an inhale, and doesn’t that make his request all the more absurd? “I…” he begins, and the words are nearly swallowed back down his throat, but he pushes them out in an ugly rush of muddled syllables. “Will you look out for Chan?”

This must not be what Minho expects, as he frowns instantly. “I think you’re doing just fine–”

“Don’t,” Felix cuts him off, wincing apologetically, but this is something he needs to say before he loses his nerve. “You know that’s not true. You know he’s always… he’s always going to try and protect me first.”

His gaze is drawn away to where Chan is still half under the van’s hood with Changbin, poking and prodding at whatever’s under there. As if sensing his scrutiny, Chan looks up, meeting his gaze, and Felix watches as Chan’s expression goes from doubtful to reassuring, because that's how it is with Chan. Chan has always overcome anything, even himself, if he knows he can make Felix’s life just that much easier. He's always juggled Felix’s trust with secrets in a careful balancing act.

Something pangs in Felix’s chest as he thinks about the lattes Chan had bought for him for two weeks straight during Felix’s freshman year before Felix had finally told him he didn’t like the taste of coffee. He thinks about the hoodies he’s stolen from Chan’s apartment that Chan pretends not to recognize whenever Felix wears them outside. He thinks about Chan physically shielding him from drunkards on the bus home on a bleary Friday night, so fierce that he hadn’t let Felix leave his side until he was safely back in his dorm with the door locked.

Felix thinks about how he’s so sure Chan loves him back but unspoken things can take unexpected shapes.

“Please,” he whispers, turning back to Minho. “Just… Just in case. That’s all I’m asking.”

Something shifts in Minho’s gaze at his request, something that Felix has never seen before. Minho has always been the most elusive of the group. He’s loving, of course, in the most Minho sort of way, but he prefers to play his cards close to the chest, meting out his emotions in careful, calculated doses. This is something else though – this is something raw and naked, something Minho usually keeps sequestered away, hidden from both prying eyes and friendly touches.

He looks sad.

Sad, like a deep, dark ache. Sad like something ripped and frayed and then taped back together. Sad that lurked in the shadows of his eyes, his mouth, his fingertips.

“You’re so far away,” Minho says, after the silence has stretched long enough to snap, and the sadness is there in every curl of his words, in the spaces between, in the breath he takes before he focuses back on Felix. “Don’t give up on us when we haven’t given up on you.”

“What?” Felix asked, taken aback.

”.uoy no pu nevig t’nevah ew nehw su no pu evig t’noD“ .xileF no kcab sesucof eh erofeb sekat eh htaerb eht ni ,neewteb secaps eht ni ,sdrow sih fo lruc yreve ni ereht si ssendas eht dna ,pans ot hguone gnol dehcterts sah ecnelis eht retfa ,syas ohniM ”,yawa raf os er’uoY“

He looks sad.

Sad, like a dark, deep ache. Sad like something ripped and frayed and then taped back together. Sad that lurked in the shadows of his eyes, his mouth, his fingertips.

“Then you make sure I don’t have to,” Minho says, and Felix knows it's a promise.

***

“Do you hear that?” Seungmin asks, stopping dead in his tracks and peering around, fingers curled loosely around his camera.

They all pause with him, and without the patterned footfalls, Felix can hear it too. There’s music, something faint and generic, along with the thrum of something mechanical, coming from somewhere in the underbrush beyond them, out of sight.

Just as Felix starts to take a cautious step towards the sound, he’s stopped by an arm against his chest, Chan materializing next to him.

“Slowly,” Chan murmurs, and then leads the way, keeping his arm as a barrier in front of Felix the entire way.

They peer around the cropping of shrubs. Jisung is right at Felix’s shoulder and he makes a confused noise. “Is that… the bus?”

He appears to be right, though Felix can’t tell if it’s the exact same bus from this distance, the bus sitting at an angle that obscured both the license plate and the driver – but the distinctive yellow stripes and lion mascot are hard to miss, as is the genuine paved road that it’s sat atop.

“I bet they’d give us a ride,” Changbin says, straightening up now that they can all see the bus idling. “We must be on the other side of the detour now.”

But Felix doesn’t follow so quickly, something twisting ugly in his stomach. “Wait,” he whispers, but Chan is already stepping forward with the rest of them, arm still out like a shield for Felix. “No… Wait.”

His voice barely carries, a pitiful wisp of noise lost to the soft blare of music from the bus. His friends continue approaching the van and Felix watches them go, rooted to the spot. The grotesque feeling of dread that sits in his stomach grows and grows, sloughing it’s way up his spine, into his lungs, his throat, displacing his breath and weighing down his tongue as he’s left behind.

Changbin steps onto the road.

He's going to be alone.

“Stop!” Felix shouts, the sound bursting from him in a near violent way. His friends all turn, clearly startled, but Felix is left off-kilter, half-out of his body as the words come vomiting out. “Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop–”

“Felix? Felix!”

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“Felix, it’s okay,” Chan says gently, reaching out to take Felix’s hand, but his fingers barely brush against Felix’s wrist before Hyunjin’s suddenly there, shoving at Chan hard enough to make him stagger back.

“Don’t,” Hyunjin hisses, spitting furiously as he gets into Chan’s space. “Don’t you fucking dare. This is your fault and you know it.”

Chan’s jaw clenches, uncowed as he steadies himself. “Hyunjin, stop.”

This just makes Hyunjin angrier as his fists curl into Chan's collar. “No. No. Not when none of this would have happened if you hadn’t wanted to play the goddamn hero, you absolute egotistical fuckwad! You did this to him, you absolute tool.”

Then he cocks his fist back and lets it fly, and Felix feels like the wind gets knocked right out of his own chest as Hyunjin socks Chan in the face.

“Hyunjin, what the fuck, _stop_.” Seungmin and Changbin both spring on him, a remix of earlier as they try to drag him off as he starts spitting obscenities as soon as Chan steps away, hand on his jaw, his lip split and bleeding sluggishly.

“No! I’m going to fucking kill him! It’s what he fucking deserves.” Hyunjin shouts.

There’s a flash of something bright and blinding, so harsh that the world turns white and painful, swiftly followed by a roar of something so deafening that it shakes the ground. When Felix’s vision clears, he can see the storm clouds that had birthed the sudden crack of lightning and its sibling thunder, roiling towards them from the horizon.

“We should keep going,” Jisung suggests, taking Felix’s hand and tugging him along. “That storm looks like no fun.”

“Yeah,” Felix sighs, eyeing the clouds for a moment longer before turning to follow Jisung along, watching as Jeongin and Seungmin fuss over Jeongin’s phone. Twisting around, he sees Chan taking up the rear, flanked by Minho and Changbin. Their eyes meet and Chan flashes him a smile, the slant of his lips warm and comforting.

Felix’s stomach lurches as he smiles back at Chan, though he has to tear his gaze away a second later when he nearly trips over Jisung.

He wonders how Chan’s smile can feel like home with so many shadows lurking in his eyes.

***

“How are you doing, Lixie?” Changbin asks, pulling Felix out of a daze. They’re still making their way down the road, arrhythmic footsteps thudding gently against the asphalt. “You’ve been quiet.”

Felix slants his eyes over to his friend, a thought striking at the question. “What’s up with Chan?”

“Huh?”

“Chan,” Felix repeats, in the hopes that Changbin has more insight than Jisung – they’ve both been friends with Chan the longest, but Jisung’s younger, more chaotic, while Changbin’s more steady personality makes him more reliable.

There’s nothing subtle about the way Changbin looks over his shoulder to stare at their oldest friend. “Anything in specific?”

“I hate you so much,” Felix hisses under his breath as he tries to shove Changbin back forward, his nerves spiking, though it doesn’t seem that Chan notices. “I just… I think he’s hiding something from me and I don’t know what.”

If it were just where they're going, Felix thinks he could deal, but there’s something more than that. Something lurking beneath the deflection of Chan’s smile that sets the alarm bells ringing.

“He’s just doing what he thinks is best, Lix,” Changbin says, but in a way that’s patient rather than condescending. “You know how it is with Chan.”

“I know, I just think–” Felix begins, and then his brain short circuits, because his hand is still resting on Changbin’s shoulder and then momentarily moves through that shoulder as Changbin glitches.

There’s no other way to explain it and even that isn’t an actual fucking explanation, as Changbin seems to not be where he’s supposed to be – he takes a step forward with Felix, but not all of him follows. First it’s a leg kept two paces back close to where Minho was standing, then it’s his head dropping to his groin with no change in his neck, and then it’s the tips of his fingers extending like they were being stretched like taffy.

“What’s happening?” Felix says, horrified as Changbin’s entire body contorts in a way that no body is ever supposed to. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, what’s happening. Changbin? Changbin!”

“Iʇ,s ɟᴉuǝ,” Changbin tries to tell him, but his voice comes from somewhere other than his mouth and Felix nearly screams.

“Fi, it’s going to be okay,” Chan says, suddenly by his side, turning Felix away from Changbin, but somehow Changbin’s still stuck in the corner of his left eye, like he’s being skewed over a layer of photoshop from hell. “Please, I promise, everything’s going to be fine.”

It’s too much, too much, and Felix thrashes in Chan’s grip – but Felix has never been the unstoppable force against Chan’s immovable object and he can’t break free. “What the fuck, Chan, what the fuck!”

“He’s fine, Fi,” Chan says, trying to get Felix to focus as he drags Felix back the way they came several paces. “Please trust me.”

As if on cue, Changbin’s there next to Minho, whole and unchanged, completely normal.

Agonizing flames are licking their way up Felix’s spine, a part of him distantly aware that he’s turning hysterical. “No,” he says, voice shrill as he tries to shove Chan off of him. “No. You can’t do this to me. I’ve followed you to hell and back, you can’t just say that every time you don’t want to fucking explain. What the FUCK, Chan!”

Despite Felix’s efforts to escape turning more violent, Chan – stupid, sweet Chan – is unfailingly gentle as he traps Felix in place. “Felix, I need you to breathe.”

“I think we might be out of options,” Jeongin says, looking at Chan as if this was some sort of expected outcome, unphased by the entire outburst. "It might be time."

“Just hold on,” Chan snaps over his shoulder, practically bear hugging Felix even as Felix tries to kick his way out to freedom.

“Chan, it’s too much for him,” Seungmin interrupts, looking around, and Felix can’t process it, refuses to perceive it, as the world around them turns sepia before reverting to the way it should be. “We knew it was a risk.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!” Felix howls, twisting to bite at Chan’s forearm in a desperate attempt to break away, but even though his teeth make contact, it’s as if Chan doesn’t even register it, still glowering at Seungmin and unaffected.

“... Fine,” Chan relents, looking back down at Felix, his expression unreadable. “Just – Fuck. Fine.”

Despite everything, Chan is painstakingly careful as he makes Felix meet his gaze. “Felix,” Chan says, calm and steady and ever the beacon of light amidst the dark and frenzied ocean. “Felix, we’re going to talk about this, but I need you to breathe for me first, okay? Can you do that?”

For anyone else, Felix isn’t sure he could manage it, but it’s Chan, it’s Chan, and he finds himself fighting to heed the request. Felix’s breathing is so erratic that his lungs burn with every inhale, but Chan’s touch is tender and unwavering, and Felix leans into the warmth, squeezing his eyes shut tight as he wills himself back to something akin to stability.

“Good,” Chan whispers, only letting go when Felix is able to stand on his own. He’s still reeling, but it’s not so terrible when he reopens his eyes, eyes trained on Chan.

It feels different when Chan draws himself up and squares his shoulders, like a missing puzzle piece being snapped into place. He’s magnetic, commanding, and Felix can’t look away.

“I’m going to ask you a couple of questions and I need you to answer them honestly.”

Felix’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I… okay.”

“Where are we?”

That question is enough for a sliver of annoyance to return. “I don’t know, Chan, you literally won’t tell me.”

Chan holds a hand up, cutting him off. “Don’t do that,” he says. “You’re overthinking it. Don’t get lost, just say what comes to you first. Let’s try again – where did we come from?”

“Are you joking?” Felix asks in return, because Chan was literally the one who’d started all of this.

The look Chan gives him is made of steel. “Stop that. Where did we come from?”

“Chan,” Felix says, unnerved now. “Why are you even asking that?” Because Chan knew, didn’t he? They’d come here together.

⋆⋆⋆

The sterile white walls were so hard to look at. Felix could feel them pressing against his retinas with their immaculate uniformity.

“I guess it really would kill them to make it more homey,” Chan joked.

⋆⋆⋆

“Because you won’t answer,” Chan says, and presses further. “Where. Did. We. Come. From?”

“Stop,” Felix says, flinching and slapping his hands over his ears.

“I know you know the answer,” Chan says, unrelenting. “I know you’re scared of what it is. Where did we come from, Felix?”

⋆⋆⋆

The concrete walls were cracked with abandonment, leaving a fine layer of dust over everything, tickling Felix’s nose even as he crept silently along the shadows.

A figure stood at the edge of a broken hallway, peering through an unfinished window into one of the offices, and Felix ghosted closer, closer, close enough that he could reach out and touch the other.

“You know,” Chan said, looking over his shoulder before Felix could actually try grabbing at him. “If you really want to try and sneak up on someone, I have a job for you.”

⋆⋆⋆

“Don’t make me answer that,” Felix says, tears welling up in his eyes as his entire body throbs in pain.

“Fine,” Chan says, but not actually backing off as he crooks a finger under Felix’s chin, tipping his gaze upwards. “Who am I, Felix?”

⋆⋆⋆

There came a moment of choice, though later they would recognize they were all too deep to back out. The drugs had been purged, the guards disabled, the escape route found.

Chan stood before them, wounded and bleeding, but defiant and determined, with fire burning in his eyes.

“If we do this, there’s no going back,” Chan said, looking each of them in the eye as he spoke. “They’ll hunt us, either to bring us back here or to kill us, but,” and in that moment, he was more legend than man, “I think the chance at our freedom is worth it.”

It was in that moment that Felix deified him. Chan was strong, he was brave, and he’d led them tirelessly forward.

Though he did not say it, Felix knew he would follow Chan to the end of the world and back.

⋆⋆⋆

“Who am I?” Chan repeats.

“My captain,” Felix finally answers.

***

There came a time

For birds with clipped wings

With bloody feathers

To find a new home

They flew

They flew

They flew

They flew

They flew in the face of a storm

The storm raged at their flight

And tried to strike them down

But they flew faster

Flew farther

And the storm could not find them

These birds flew to freedom

But they flew

Knowing one day they would return

And the storm would fear them

⋆⋆⋆

Felix would never remember the days before. None of them would.

But he’d remember everything after.

It went like this: One day Felix woke up and he didn’t know why.

His body understood the value of routine and he let it carry him along, but he was awake when he was once asleep, and he did not understand why until his legs carried him down a long, white hallway and then someone grabbed his wrist and pulled him into a darkened room with a hand clamped over his mouth.

“Don’t shout, I won’t hurt you,” a voice whispered in his ear, and it was the first voice that Felix would ever remember. “I know you’re probably feeling lost. I switched your pills out with blanks, the drugs have started leaving your system.”

Not much of that made any sense to Felix, but Felix’s curiosity had been piqued and thus it was easy enough to stay still and quiet until the other person let him go so they could get a look at each other.

Felix saw dark eyes, broad shoulders, and an officer’s uniform, and then saw his very first smile as the other looked him over.

“It’s nice to meet you, Felix,” this stranger told him, sticking his hand out. “I’m Chan. I want you to meet me out in the hedges tonight – there’s something I want you to see. The others will be there.”

⋆⋆⋆

“Do you remember?” Chan asks, his thumb smoothing over Felix’s brow. “Are you with me now?”

“...Y...es,” Felix answers, pausing before steeling himself and answering more firmly. “Yes.”

“Take me through what you remember,” Chan instructs, gentle again now that he’s broken through. “But don’t try to push too hard.”

It takes a moment before Felix can even piece a sentence together. It hurts to look directly at the shape of it, the shape of the truth, so he merely peeks at it, merely takes a morsel for a taste test.

“We’d decided to make a move,” he finally says. “We’d been hiding for so long, waiting for the right moment. We… we wanted to show people what was really happening beneath the city. What had happened to us.”

Saying that makes Felix want to vomit, but with each word, it becomes easier. He lets them slip from his tongue without scrutiny.

“We’d been planning for months,” he continues, eyes trained on Chan’s face because if he looks anywhere else, this fragile grip he has might shatter. “We were so sure we couldn’t fail, not after all the work we’d done. Everyone was going to know what they did to us.”

⋆⋆⋆

“Turn left and head into the access tunnel,” Jeongin instructed through the earpiece, and Felix crawled along, Hyunjin on his heels. “It’ll take you straight to the control room. Once you get in, Chan can start broadcasting from the governor's office.”

“Got it,” Felix confirmed. He knew his part of the plan by heart – he’d never been to this part of the facility during their time spent the first time around, but he was pretty sure the blueprints were permanently burned into his eyelids now.

“Be safe, little one,” Chan whispered on a private channel.

⋆⋆⋆

“Weren’t we so cocky,” Chan says with a soft chuckle, though there’s a strain to his words. “We were so sure we could take on the world.”

“We were,” Felix agrees. “But we were right, weren’t we?”

Chan’s expression turns grim, and Felix does not wonder why.

Because they’d been mostly right.

⋆⋆⋆

“I can’t believe we did it,” Hyunjin said numbly, staring down at the line of screens, all displaying the same thing – a completed uplink. They’d just released every last piece of documentation this facility had to offer, along with Chan’s scathing denouncement of those who’d created and funded the project – wealthy businessmen and crooked politicians all alike. “Holy shit.”

They really had done it.

“It’s over,” Seungmin whispered in their earpieces, sounding shell shocked.

But he’d spoken too soon.

“Guys.” It was Chan, voice thick with anger. “That. That fucker. That coward.”

Felix and Hyunjin shared alarmed looks. “Chan?” Felix tried.

Their leader barreled on, ineloquent in his fury. “He surrendered. He fucking surrendered and– fuck, I really thought he would do the right thing but he. Fuck. It doesn’t matter. He’s not a problem anymore. But he’s.”

Everything tilted off-kilter as Chan finally spat it out.

“He turned the city defenses inwards and used a dead man’s switch. He’s just… He’s just going to kill the entire city. We have… we have ten minutes.”

The realization turned Felix’s blood to ice. The city was a giant, sprawling beast, teeming with life, and Felix had known their makers were cruel and callous, but to discard so much life without a second thought…

That was truly monstrous.

“We can turn it off,” he blurted out, scrambling back towards the main console, Hyunjin one step ahead of him. “Even with the switch triggered.”

And Jeongin was one step ahead of them, even. “It looks like the defense systems are pretty isolated,” he told the two of them, and Felix was distantly aware of Chan coordinating with Minho and Changbin before he blocked their voices out. Ten minutes wasn’t a lot of time. “I don’t think we can override the switch, but – Chan, there should be a control panel in the governor’s office. Can you find it?”

Catching on to Jeongin’s plan, Felix slid into a chair. They probably couldn’t kill the system completely, but if they forced it to re-authentic, Chan could shut it down from the main control panel.

“There’s something…” Hyunjin muttered in annoyance, fingers flying over the keys. “... Oh, those fuckers, they have some pet AI sitting on it like a fucking dragon.”

Felix frowned, but soon achieved the same results. It wasn’t a complicated AI, but it was fast and sneaky, undoing any attempt they made at bypassing it within an instant.

“Seven minutes,” Seungmin confirmed and Hyunjin grunted in frustration.

“It’s too fast like this,” Felix said, unwilling to waste more time as he pushed back to his feet. “I’m gonna hook up.”

“Felix,” Chan said warningly.

Were the situation not so dire, Felix would have laughed, but he’d already moved towards one of the cabinets lining the wall. “We don’t have time, Chan.”

“You know the risks of interfacing with a hostile system,” Chan argued heatedly.

“The only way we take the system offline is if we deal with the AI first,” Felix fired back as he yanked the neared cabinet open. From it dropped an examination table, along with a pack of syringes filled with a clear liquid, and one long cable – a cable with a jack that matched the port that had been inserted at the base of Felix’s skull long before Felix’s memories began.

“Felix is right,” Jeongin said, backing him up. “We don’t have time for anything else.”

Quickly grabbing one of the syringes, Felix jammed it into his thigh, the icy liquid pouring into him as he reached for the jack. “It’ll be fast,” he said, trying to reassure Chan. “I go in, I deal with the AI, Hyunjin pulls me out while you pull the plug.”

“Be quick,” Chan said, though he was clearly unhappy with the entire situation. "... Please, be safe."

⋆⋆⋆

“It’s not your fault, you know,” Felix says quietly.

“Don’t,” Chan says, his entire body gone rigid, so taut he's almost trembling. This time it’s Chan who looks away, jaw clenched.

But now it’s also Felix’s turn to push, as he takes Chan’s hand in his own and squeezes to make him refocus. “You know I’m right,” he says. “We knew the risks going in. We didn’t have a choice.”

“I should have waited,” Chan grits out, still unwilling ot meet his gaze.

“The city has sixty million people in its walls,” Felix reminds Chan. “You did what you had to do.”

Chan’s expression twists unhappily. “Felix, do you even know where we are?”

A part of Felix wants to answer like he had before – of course he doesn’t know, it’s supposed to be a secret, right?

But that isn’t true.

So he swallows hard and answers honestly. “Me. This… this is. This is me. We’re in... we're in me. This is my mind.”

⋆⋆⋆

Felix was almost gleeful as he shoved the AI into a box, a path cleared for Chan the moment he slammed the lock shut. It wasn’t easy, per se, but it was satisfying, as the extraction began and Felix raced back out of the system.

The very last thing Felix remembered was everything going black.

And then he remembered nothing.

⋆⋆⋆

“I took the system offline,” Chan says, and the words are laced with so much self-loathing that Felix’s heart aches. Chan, sweet and loyal Chan, who has only ever wanted to protect those he loved. “You didn’t make it out in time. You weren’t dead, you just… you just wouldn’t wake up. _I_ did that to you.”

“It was a choice I made,” Felix says, shaking his head, tugging on the hand he’s still holding. “Chan, you know you couldn’t have stopped me.”

For a moment, it looks like Chan is going to cry and then he groans, scrubbing at his face with the palm of his free hand, just taking a moment to steady himself. “You’re so goddamn stubborn, you know that?”

“It could be worse,” Felix says, grinning in an attempt to lighten the mood as he gives Chan all the brightness Chan deserves. He is not the sun, he is the sunflower, but he does his best. “I could be Minho.”

“I will take that as a compliment!” Minho calls, and the rest of the world snaps back into being, with all of their friends scattered around them. The sight of them all standing there waiting for him makes Felix’s heart ache even more, though this time it is with a warmth and a happiness that Felix will treasure forever.

***

“So…” And Chan finally looks a bit worn out, a bit harried as he looks down at where his fingers are still intertwined with Felix’s. “Where’s Hyunjin?”

“I don’t–” Felix begins and then stops himself, because he can feel it, now that Chan has walked him through so much. The instinctual ripple of something, something he can’t see the shape of, but knows it’s color, knows it’s taste.

He twists, examining the landscape around them and then points with his free hand. It isn’t towards the asphalt road they’ve been following, but instead towards a building to their left, a concrete structure that rose above the trees and looked to be an outpost of some sort for the derelict manufacturing plant they’d passed through at the very beginning of their journey – though now Felix understands the detour signs that had been plastered around it.

There is no lost love for where they’d begun.

He leads them along, one hand still gripping Chan’s like a lifeline, as if Chan is the grounding rod to Felix’s lightning.

Hyunjin is sprawled out at the base of the building, just laying there as he stares up at the skies. Felix doesn’t look up, unsure of what he’d find there. Would there be stars? Or another storm? The city they’d saved? Or would there be the untethering of his last sense of self to the gaping maw of empty space?

Felix doesn’t want to know.

Carefully extricating himself fully from Chan, Felix kneels down next to Hyunjin, though this just causes Hyunjin to roll onto his side away from him, shoulders rigid. “Go away, Lix,” he hisses, and it reminds Felix a little bit of a wounded animal curled up in defense, and also a little bit of their past. “Just fucking leave.”

But Felix doesn’t do that. He gently drapes himself against Hyujin, cheek pressed soft to his shoulder. “I forgive you,” he whispers, because more pieces to the puzzle locked into place

Hyunjin’s entire body shudders and when he speaks, his voice is wet and broken. “W.. why would you say that. You. You know what happened, Lix– Fuck.”

⋆⋆⋆

Felix looked up once the jack was secure, adrenaline wrapped so tightly around his chest he could barely breathe, his heartbeat rabbiting against his ribs. “See you on the other side,” he said with a wink.

Hyunjin scoffed from where he was hunched over one of the system diagnostics displays, ready to initiate the interface. “Just don’t take too long.”

Grinning, Felix settled down on the table, trying to make himself as comfortable as possible, already feeling the sequence starting up. “You know you can’t keep up with me,” he said, even as his vision blurred, his eyes and his brains out of sync for a disorienting split second. “Pull me out as soon as you can, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll save your ass,” Hyunjin said, giving Felix a salute.

⋆⋆⋆

Felix imagines that guilt must be such a heavy burden, a burden that Hyunjin has borne this entire time.

“I forgive you,” he repeats, pouring his whole heart into it.

With shoulders heaving and tears hidden behind trembling hands, Hyunjin curls into a tight ball and shatters completely, while Felix holds him close, holds him so tight that not a single piece of his precious friend can get lost.

***

“It was Jeongin who finally got it to work,” Seungmin explains as they finally resume their trek down the road. Somewhere behind them, Hyunjin and Chan are quietly talking things out, something that warmes Felix to the core. “Conceptually, it’s just using the system interface as a bridge to another place, instead of just into the system.”

“Took a while to figure out,” Jeongin says with a shrug. “Your brain never went inactive, so we never unplugged the jack, and then it was just… worth a try to see if we could get you to come back with us. It’s a lot of theoreticals, but it’s been working so far.”

There’s something about the suggestion of success and failure that Felix isn’t ready to consider. “Does that mean the camera…” Felix takes a stab in the dark, still trying to put the fringe pieces together.

“All our research is backed up,” Seungmin reassures him. “And anything that might be fun too. I could make copies, easy enough”

But things unravel a moment later, sooner than Felix expects.

“Oh, I don’t like this,” Seungmin says as he looks down at his body, the unpleasant reality of what’s happening to him visible as his bones snap unnaturally, his skin twitching like a strange combination of a sentient beast and old gaming animation.

“Really sucks,” Jeongin agrees, grimacing and then just shutting his eyes so he doesn’t have to see what’s happening to his body. “We're being rejected... I didn’t realize extraction subroutines take so long in this environment though. That’s… Interesting.”

“Does it hurt?” Felix asks, blanching a little as Seungmin’s eyelids invert. Oh, this is most unpleasant.

“Kinda feels like being tickled with a feather duster?” Jeongin tries to explain, even as the glitching intensifies. “But like… it’s happening to your insides too.”

“Disgusting,” Minho says, clearly delighted, as Seungmin flips him the bird right before he and Jeongin both freeze and then blip out of sight.

Chan catches Felix before he can freak out. “They’re fine,” he says, arm around Felix’s shoulders, turning him away from where his two friends had just stood. “Promise. They’re both in the lab now. It’s like Jeongin said, it’s just a representation of them getting kicked out of the system.”

Right. Right, Jeongin had said that. It takes a moment, but Felix finally swallows and nods. “Right,” he agrees. He understands it conceptually – can faintly remember discussing these things in theory with Jeongin, long before any of this had happened – but that doesn’t make the actual visuals of his friends being dismantled purely because they’d hit a point where his brain couldn’t handle them any easier to witness.

Jisung’s entire face is scrunched up in a grimace. “Lix, this is like… so gross.”

“You knew this was likely,” Chan reminds him firmly, still holding Felix close.

“I didn’t know it was going to be like that,” Jisung groans, squirming in a remarkable imitation of a toddler throwing a tantrum. “Are we all gonna do that? I don’t want to.”

Which is tragically ironic, as he starts glitching out next, paces from where Jeongin and Seungmin had left them – soon joined by Changbin too.

“I hate it!” Jisung declares emphatically, and Changbin rolls his eyes, reaching out to snag Jisung, which produces the blood-curdling image of their bodies melding together unpleasantly.

Changbin is less ruffled by the entire ordeal, turning to grin at Felix. “See you later, slut,” he teases.

“You’ll do great!” Jisung yells, as if he were far away and not right in front of them. “You’re gonna be the beeeeeeeeeǝeeeeeeeǝeeeeeeeeeeeeeeǝǝeeeeeeeeeeeeǝǝǝǝeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeǝeeeeeeeeeeeeeeǝǝǝǝǝst.”

There isn't even a blink of an eye between the two of them being there and the two of them not being there. Felix’s stomach gives a lurch at the sensation of them disappearing, but those remaining don’t dwell, instead pushing on down the road. 

They cover a lot of ground before Hyunjin’s arms begin flickering.

“No,” Hyunjin says, turning to Felix, almost pleading. “No, I need– I need to stay! Lix, please.”

“Hyunjin,” Minho says, stepping between them and cupping Hyunjin’s face, forcing the other to look at him instead. “Hyunjin… It’s time.”

“Please,” Hyunjin whispers, but Minho just shakes his head.

“Come on. I bet Jisung is causing all sorts of trouble while we’re away.” He turns to Felix and Chan and gives them a knowing smile. “I think this’ll be the end for both of us.”

“You’re in charge,” Chan says with a nod.

It takes a moment for Felix to pull out of himself enough to make his way over to his friends. “Thanks for coming to find me,” he says, giving them both a hug. It sets him spinning when he touches Hyunjin, but he squeezes him tight anyway, before moving on to Minho.

“I’ll keep my word, but you better keep yours too,” Minho says as he ruffles Felix’s hair affectionately.

Like the others, they are there in one instant and then gone the next, the air distinctly displaced where they used to be. It takes a moment for the tingling in Felix’s hands to fade and it leaves him surprisingly cold and hollow, staring at the empty space where his two friends had stood.

“Felix?” Chan asks, coming to his side, fingertips brushing against his arm with a shower of sparks. “Are you ready?”

Strange that Felix has a choice in that. He’s slow to answer, but eventually faces Chan. It’s just the two of them, insignificant beneath an endless expanse of sky, looming above them with starlight and darkspace.

“Let’s go,” he says. They both turn to where the road stretched beyond them, without an end in sight.

Side by side, they set off on the final leg of their journey.

***

“So…” Felix begins, because Chan’s kept to his side like a shadow, constant and silent in a way that threatens to unnerve Felix. “What were you expecting when you got here?”

“Honestly?” Chan shrugs. “I really wasn’t sure. Jeongin did some test runs before, but we were all… aware of it. So we knew there would be a set scenario, but not really what it would entail.” He looks around, at the deep midnight sky, at the road ahead of them, at the storm that lurks at the very edges of their vision. “I guess this part doesn’t surprise me...”

“But?” Felix prompts, following the familiar map of Chan’s thoughts.

Chan doesn’t answer immediately, clearly still mulling the whole thing over. “At the start. Back at the beginning,” he finally says. “Is… Is all of that what you really want?”

There’s a throb at the base of Felix’s skull that takes him by surprise – he had assumed the headaches were a thing of the past, but apparently having to piece things together is still a lot for his poor little broken brain to handle.

They’d never had time to think about that sort of thing after they'd woken up – it had always been about the next move, the next fight. Felix had crashed through those days with a reckless abandon that had come with the assurance of his own fragility: they’d save the world or die trying.

In hindsight, it’s a miracle that ‘save the world’ had been the winning outcome.

Still, he reflects back on the Felix he’d been, the Felix he’d costumed himself with at the beginning. He supposes he should have been more ambitious. Surely overthrowing an oppressive government came with perks or luxury or something, and yet this is what Felix had fashioned for himself.

This being the Felix that was so concerned about switching his major like Jeongin, who was so fucking excited that he’d be sharing an apartment with Changbin and Jisung when they returned to university at the end of summer, who worried about what the future held for him – so muddled up in mundane things. Such an average, normal Felix.

That Felix had taken Jisung’s hand and whispered a secret to him, all the way back at the start of things.

“... You cheated, did you?” Felix accuses, though his tone is playful as he whirls to face Chan. “Or did Jisung spill the beans?”

It’s amusing to watch Chan’s eyes widen just a fraction, the tiniest slip of panic at being called out, before he tries to school his expression, taking the smallest step back and straightening his shoulders. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Felix is delighted. “Do you actually care that I want to like, get a degree and shit?” he teases.

“Of course I do!” Chan says, and he means it, which makes Felix feel something stupidly giddy bubble in his stomach – this type of exhiliration is so different than the kinds they’d had while on the run from the facility, but Chan cares so much. “That’s just…” Chan breaks just a fraction more, raking a hand through his hair and diverting his gaze. He’s flustered, something that Felix has never seen before. “That’s just not all.”

It’s the fucking cutest thing in the world and Felix is a little bit love-drunk.

So he reaches out, taking Chan’s hands in both of his and slowly tangling their fingers together. How absurd, but he feels this is the answer to Chan’s question, the way their fingers slot together.

This is all he wants.

“That me,” he says, drawing Chan towards him, and Chan follows his pull as if he’s helpless to do naught else. “That me, the me I thought I was… He wanted to sit under the stars with you.”

Chan’s eyes snap back up to his own and Felix, emboldened, continues.

“That me wanted to hold your hands like this and ask you to trust me too,” he says, and his heart pounds wildly, but the beat is euphoric. “You’ve always protected me, you’ve always made me precious. The Chan I made you to be, the Chan you are…” He steps into Chan’s space, their clasped hands gently pressed together between them.

“My brave, brave Chan – I would pray to any god, to the entire universe, to you, for the chance to call you mine,” he breathes out, and he’s praying even now. Oh, how he prays that Chan can see the aching truth of it all.

There is no version of Felix that would choose differently.

And it would seem that he gets his message across, as Chan presses their foreheads together. “How have you not realized that I’ve always been yours,” he whispers, and it is the softest confession.

There’s nothing to stop Felix as he surges forward, as he kisses Chan like a man possessed, like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do, whining softly when Chan pulls him in even closer and kisses back, honey-sweet, mouth hungry against his own. They kiss as stars colliding, as a love that has waited and ached and yearned.

Felix is dazed but triumphant when they break apart. He brings a fingertip to his own lips, marveling at the reality of it all. "... I like being right."

And Chan laughs, not letting him go as he presses adoring kisses across the bridge of his nose, across the freckles on his cheeks. "Pretty sure you just lost Seungmin a significant amount of money." And it's the most alive Felix has ever felt.

Felix wishes they could stay like this forever, with Chan nuzzling into the crook of his neck. It would be so easy to pretend they had all the time in the world – If they went back to the start, if they retraced their steps, surely they could always have this. That they could have this forever.

But the path forward calls to him, and so Felix takes Chan’s hand when they break apart, and leads him down the road once more.

It stretches on for an eternity, though Felix knows there is an end, can sense it in the most vague of sensations, but it’s there nonetheless. As they cross the abyss, the storm turns to aurora borealis, the concrete turns to crystal, and Chan’s palm is warm against Felix’s.

The expanse is endless, as they pass by indigo mountains and golden deserts and silvered rivers. The road takes them through the heart of a star, its pulsing heartbeat pressing down around them, and Felix thinks it feels a bit like love.

***

“Hey, Sunshine,” Chan says, gently breaking the silence, and Felix stops dead in his tracks, because despite all his efforts to hide it, Chan is clearly losing the battle against being kicked out of the system, sweat on his brow and fists clenched - this much further in must make it more difficult. He struggles to smile at Felix, valiant and brave as always, and Felix feels something in his chest crack wide open. “Sunshine… I think this is it for me.”

“Don't.” Felix doesn’t even know why he tries – he can feel it. He can feel the edges of Chan disintegrate as this constructed world rejects him, something so deep and innate that Felix can’t override it. He also can’t stop the panic clawing up his throat as he realizes he’s going to be alone. Truly and completely alone.

Chan is painfully sweet as he cups Felix’s cheeks, thumbing gently against his skin. “Felix, I’m going to be waiting for you out there,” he says. “However long you need, I’ll be waiting.”

“We don't even know if I'll make it out,” Felix says, and he aches with the reality of it all.

“I know,” Chan agrees with a whisper, leaning forward to press the most delicate kiss to Felix’s forehead, like a promise and a prayer, though Felix isn’t sure who’s listening besides him. “I’m placing all my bets on you.”

With all the strength he can muster, Felix throws his arms around Chan and squeezes tight, trying desperately to hide his fears away. It means he can’t see the way the world around them burst into blossoming static and color, but Chan can. “Fuck, Chan.”

“All my bets on _you_ , little one.” Chan whispers, and holds him close, holds him like he’s precious, even as everything about Chan destabilizes. "I trust you, Felix."

He’s there until the very end, but then the end comes and he’s gone, Felix’s arms left empty and tears welling up in his eyes. He falls to his knees as he's hit with the truth. He’s finally, finally left alone.

How long Felix is slumped there is a mystery, lost amidst the world of his own making – without the others, the passing of time is much more nebulous. It could have been minutes, it could have been a lifetime, but eventually Felix staggers to his feet.

He is alone.

He is alone.

“I’m alone,” he whispers, and then scrubs at his face, fingers pulling harshly against his cheeks and jaw.

He is alone, but he has people waiting for him.

Resolute, Felix turns to the road, knowing the end is just out of sight, and sets off into the endless night. He has a promise to keep and a wager to win.

***

At the heart of this strange land, there’s a deep crater left by a fallen star. Felix finds it at the end of the road, standing at the very edge and peering inside. The glow of the moon doesn’t penetrate its depths, making it impossible to see how far down it goes.

“Well, Felix,” he tells himself as he rolls his shoulders, bouncing on the balls of his feet. It’s foreboding, but he knows what he’s looking for is down there. “It’s now. There is no never.”

With that, he gets a running start and leaps over the edge of the crater, plunging into the unknown.

The world disappears, leaving him in a blanket of near darkness. The mountains, the road, the moon, they all leave him too. All that is left are the jagged edges of his own mind, curling around him like a pattern of shattered glass.

Felix traces his fingers over the edges of his mind, careful not to let his fingertips catch on the broken shards as he carefully navigates through the wreckage. It’s a delicate affair, Felix doing his best not to focus on the truth, but to let it slip past him. To let himself know the shape of it, but not the color, not the taste.

At the very heart of this place – of his mind – there’s a door.

The door is locked and Felix is afraid to open it, can feel the creep of terror in his bones even as the door manifests, but… there’s a key in the palm of his hand.

The key is heavy in his hand as he thinks back to his friends. Instead of the door, he thinks of the jut of Changbin’s jaw and the curl of Minho’s lashes; thinks of Jisung’s laughter and Jeongin’s drawl; thinks of the way Seungmin is methodical and Hyunjin is reckless.

He thinks of Chan’s heartbeat against his own ribs.

Felix places the key in the lock, twisting as the tumblers fall into place.

They were his, they were his, they were his, every last one of them. His family, his blood, his heart.

He’d been ready to die for them.

Surely he’d be ready to live for them.

Felix walks through the door.

When Felix wakes, it’s to an empty bed and the balcony door open wide, the sea breeze sending the curtains fluttering. He’s slept in later than he meant to, evident by the sun hanging high in the sky, flooding the room with golden warmth.

Rolling out of bed, Felix shrugs into a discarded robe left draped over a chair and wanders out onto the balcony.

It turns out overthrowing an oppressive government does have perks – mostly therapy, but Felix had taken one look at this house, perched right at the ocean’s edge, and had fallen in love instantly. Even now, he’s lulled to contentment as he leans against the balcony railing, basking in the sun as small waves fall against the rocks right below him.

Somewhere behind him, the front door unlocks, and then there’s the pitter-patter of tiny paws bounding across the threshold.

“Berry – wait, no, Berry! Stop, you’ll get mud everywhere!”

A tiny dog with some _very_ muddy paws races into the bedroom, Chan at her heels. He catches her right before she can take a flying leap onto the bed that currently has Felix’s favorite white sheets on it.

“Nice save, babe,” Felix says, amused. He reaches for a beach towel they’d left to dry on the balcony railing, figuring it would do in a pinch. “C’mon, Berry, you’re a mess.”

“You think she’d be exhausted after a run,” Chan grumbles as he carries their pup over, dropping a kiss to Felix’s cheek before Felix gets to work on getting the worst of the mud off Berry’s long fur. “We’re going to need to mop the floors.”

“Later,” Felix says, stealing Berry a snuggle once she’s all cleaned up, before setting her back down on the ground so she can lunge away to fetch her favorite toy. “Seungmin’s going to eat us alive if we’re late to brunch again.”

Chan pouts, crowding Felix against the railing. “We don’t have to go,”

Laughing, Felix shoves Chan away and then tugs him back in for a quick peck on the lips. “How about we go to brunch because we like our friends and then we drop Berry off at Hyunjin’s for a dog date so the house is ours for the rest of the day. Deal?”

Chan pretends to think about this, fiddling with the sash of Felix’s robe, but his eyes are dancing playfully. “Deal,” he says, swooping in to kiss Felix breathless.

“You are a wicked man, Bang Christopher Chan,” Felix accuses when he’s freed, picking his way back inside to find the ideal brunch fit.

“But you love me,” Chan says smugly, shameless as he watches Felix tug clothes on.

“But I love you,” Felix agrees, warmth blossoming in his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> [Spoiler Info/Warnings]  
> ♣ Might be weird to read at some points, but all formatting is 100% intentional.  
> ♣ Side Effects used as main inspiration, but this piece also uses plot points inspired by Miroh and District9, and therefore set in a semi-futuristic alternate reality.  
> ♣ Hyunjin acts like an asshole because he has no healthy coping mechanisms and it's easier to blame Chan.  
> ♣ Felix has suffered a brain injury of sorts, though it is not discussed in detail.  
> ♣ Felix experiences an alternate reality/amnesia due to this injury  
> ♣ This nearly had an ambiguous/open ending but it's 2020 and fuck that.
> 
> If you're on mobile, you can't read the binary translation that is embedded in the piece so I've added it below:
> 
> "I am asleep and they are awake. I am asleep and they are awake. I am asleep and they are awake. I can see the door and I know it is closed. The door is locked and I know I hold the key. The door is closed and I am afraid to unlock it. I am afraid.
> 
> I am afraid."
> 
> Thanks for reading! ♥ I hope you enjoyed it :3/ I super, super loved being able to write it!


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